


an evening with night

by argylemikewheeler



Category: The Goldfinch (2019), The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt
Genre: Boris is a great boyfriend, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:14:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23829688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/argylemikewheeler/pseuds/argylemikewheeler
Summary: A look into Theo's trauma and distress from the eyes of the man that loves him the most-- and just wants to help in every way he knows how.
Relationships: Theodore Decker/Boris Pavlikovsky
Comments: 7
Kudos: 159





	an evening with night

**Author's Note:**

> I realized I've written most of my tgf fics from Theo's pov and I wanted to try my hand at adult Boris. xo

It was seven at night and Boris had hot soup and sandwiches from Theo’s favorite deli tucked under his arm. It was a bit late for dinner, but Boris also knew Theo never ate without him. It wasn’t an agreed upon or even announced rule, just something Boris noticed. Even if Theo did eat without him, when Boris was _horrifically_ late as he sometimes was, Theo would still sit down and pick at Boris’s food, having an echo of his meal.

There was no need to rush, but Boris found he had no patience that day for any sidewalk traffic. He weaved around evening walkers and giggling couples. He ducked around scaffolding over the block before their apartment building. That morning when he’d left, he’d waved up to the workers-- three of them having previously worked for him on a Job. Nice men, all of them. By then though, no one was working. It was dark out and the entire city seemed to be tucking in early.

The lobby was slightly less empty than the street-- _somehow_ \-- a few other tenants milling in from outside and heading up to their beds. Boris waved to the two men at the front desk-- and one of them waved him over.

“Mister Decker! Good evening, how are you?” The man-- _boy_ , really-- smiled. His face was covered in hormonal acne and his voice cracked as he incorrectly said Boris’s last name. It was the name all their mail was addressed to because Boris was _very_ tired of things being sent back because dumb Americans couldn’t spell his name. He understood why the boy ( _Antony perhaps?)_ called him by Theo’s last name. It also wasn’t really a bad thing. Not at all a bad thing.

“Very good-- have dinner and am very hungry. And you? Busy day? Excitement at all?” Boris liked making small talk. It made people feel good-- and that was _also_ never a bad thing.

"We’re alright, Boris, we’re doing alright.” The other man said before turning and looking at the mail shelves behind him. Jean Paul was Boris’s favorite of the two-- he always laughed at Boris’s jokes and was the first to put Theo at ease whenever they walked into the building together-- which was still something Theo stumbled through uncomfortably. “Got a package for you. Thought I’d give it to Theo when he came by after work but, never showed.”

“Theo is not back from work?” Boris tried to remember if there was a phone chime he had forgotten to answer.

“Never left today.” Antony added, typing something out on the desk computer in front of him. Boris was glad he wasn’t looking at him, he didn’t want the boy to see the moment of confused panic on his face; it could worry him, someone so young.

“Hm. Maybe he is feeling ill today. I will go up and see. Thank you, thank you. Have good night, both of you, yes?” Boris grabbed the package with his free hand and started off for the elevator. Jean Paul and Antony waved as the doors closed over.

It took Boris five minutes just to get a hand free enough to get his keys out-- only to find that the door was unlocked. He slid the package in with his foot as he stepped inside, kicking the door closed.

“Potter?” Boris kicked off his shoes and padded into the kitchen first. He placed the food down on the counter and poked around to the small dining room. The curtains were still closed by the table, their home shut out from acknowledging the day-- well, night by then. “Potter, where are you? Everything okay?”

Finally, a slow answer. “The couch.”

“Theo!” Boris backed through the kitchen and looked through the cut-out over the sink. He saw Theo slowly propping himself up and turning to find his voice. “Are here! Men downstairs had said you were not at work-- did not see you leave! Did you stay here all day?”

Boris spoke, almost, with a kind of excitement. Not because he wanted Theo to be in a poor mood, but because he was excited to turn it around with the surprise quart of matzo ball soup and sausage and pepper grinder. Theo had never said it was his favorite, but Boris could tell whenever they went to the deli for lunch, he had a certain joy waiting for his food. Boris wanted to hand over the food and see that joy appear suddenly.

Instead though, he saw that Theo was not just feeling poorly. He looked it too. Theo was still wearing what he wore to bed: a ripped, old gray shirt from their Vegas years (it was so old Boris didn’t even know who’s it was by then) and his plain, blue boxers. His hair was poking out in different directions as if he’d been restlessly rolling around all day. Which he probably was. There were crease marks on Theo’s face where he’d been pressed against the pillows for hours. His eyes were on Boris, but they weren’t looking at him.

“Theo, what is wrong? You look very bad.”

“Thanks.” Theo ducked his head. His neck cracked audibly. Boris winced and walked around to the couch.

“Why are you like this? What are you on? Drinking? Take something?” Boris wasn’t sure what was in the house except _maybe_ some Xanax. They had cut out the harder stuff in the past three years. They wanted to see the other live a long time-- which of course meant they _both_ had to stop. Fair was fair. “Who did you buy from?”

“I’m not... I’m not high, Boris.” Theo swatted in front of him, despite Boris not coming into his personal space. “I’m just tired.”

“What has happened?” Boris sat on the edge of the couch. “Potter?”

Theo sighed and closed his eyes. He clenched his jaw, muscles all the way up to his temples tensing. “The construction... It... I heard them this morning.”

“Keep you awake? Oh, I will talk to them then! I know half of the group there. Very understanding men! If I tell them--”

“No.” Theo opened his eyes but he didn’t look up at Boris again. “I heard the construction when I was sleeping and... it woke me up and.. it sounded.” Another sigh. “It sounded like an explosion.”

Boris reached for Theo’s hand, hesitating to counteract Theo’s own involuntary retraction from the touch. After a moment, their two hands slotted together. Theo stared at their fingers, tangling them.

“You are upset. Reminded of... before. Have had long day, yes? All alone, in here? That is long day, very hard on you, Potter. I am sorry mother is gone and ghost of fear will not leave you. Very sorry... But I am here now! Not alone now.” Boris smiled and lowered his head to fit into Theo’s distracted eye-line. “I brought you food, Potter. You need good meal-- and then we take bath! Oh, yes. We sit and relax you and--”

“I’m not hungry.” Theo said curtly. He pulled his hand away from Boris’s and laid back down. He rolled over and faced the back of the couch. “Eat without me.”

“But Theo--”

“I _said_ eat without me. I don’t want any.” Theo’s voice was muffled, He rested a hand over his face, just under his glasses.

“Is your favorite though. Called in before I left to make sure was ready when I got there. Your soup, hot sandwich, both.” Boris shook Theo gently, resting his hands on his waist. “Potter, have to eat with me. I can hear stomach grumbling. Hungry, very hungry.”

“Boris, please, I’m not in the fucking mood today.” He rolled his head back to look at Boris, exposing his red, bleary eyes and tight, pinched expression. “I spent half the morning thinking I was thirteen I don’t _want_ to play house right now, okay!” He shouted.

Boris wasn’t sure if it was the way Theo shoved him-- or the way he felt the unflattering urge to grab Theo and hold him tightly-- but Boris wanted to hit Theo. He felt a hot tension in his bicep as if he could bring his arm back... but he’d never bring it down on him. Oh _god_ never. They weren’t fifteen anymore. They weren’t shoving each other into dark, under-chlorinated swimming pools. They weren’t deprived of touch. Boris _could_ take Theo and hold him, if he wanted. It was just that, if Boris hit him there could be no room for argument. He could try and make Theo feel the warmth of his skin on his without refusal-- without deprivation.

“Sit up.” Boris said, standing back from the couch. “Potter, sit up. Put feet on the ground. Sit _up._ ” Still, Boris did not touch Theo, but he pointed with enough force Theo slowly pushed himself vertical, his bare feet pressing down on the wood floor. “Will not let you sulk-- feel upset? Yes, cannot stop you. But this... _this_! Doing more harm than good for you. Will feel _worse_ when morning comes and you are still unfed! No shower! Are not drunk orphans no more, Theo. Have house! Have _good_ life. Let it help you.”

It wasn’t screaming if Boris was desperate to help. It wasn’t raising his voice if he was doing it to get Theo to hear over whatever was in his head. He wasn’t like his father if he kept his hands to himself and yelled only the nice things. Boris couldn’t be like his father if he genuinely loved someone. He got that from his mother.

Theo rolled his wrists and looked at Boris, resigned but not unwilling. “What did you get me? A-And you got yourself something too, right?”

“Pfft, Potter. You insult me.”

Boris walked back to the kitchen and grabbed the deli bag. He ripped a fistful of paper towels to take as place settings-- Theo would not let them eat on the coffee table without any cover-- and ducked down to grab a bottle of wine from under the cabinets. Before Boris emerged again in the living room, or met Theo’s eyes through the wall cut-out, he thought of Theo drinking that night. The heavy slosh in Boris’s hand would only amplified with whatever heavy, thick _darkness_ was in Theo. He’d black out again. He’d start screaming and crying. He’d try and climb out the window-- try and find his mother in a cloud of smoke that had dissipated ten years before.

Boris put the bottle back and hurried out to Theo, smiling and hoping to appear aloof.

“Hungry, yes?”

"Kind of starving.” Theo was exhausted enough to agree.

“Good thing you have kept me around, eh? Boris keeps you fed and happy. Good roommate, no?” Boris sat beside Theo on the couch, nudging his side with obnoxious eagerness. “Good man to have around.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” Theo muttered, cracking the smallest but least reluctant smile. “He’s pretty good to have around-- wait, did you get me soup?”

Boris burst out laughing at Theo’s sudden distraction-- he had to. If he didn’t laugh at it, at how much life and focus was missing from Theo’s face as he came back to reality, Boris would surely get upset.

It was usually a strange sadness; not one that most people spoke about in explorations of their darker moments. Seeing Theo so absent and crumpled, Boris’s felt like he fell backwards into a tunnel. Going and going, falling down down _down_. He sunk, feeling like he was stomping his way down the street after telling his best friend-- without words-- that he _needed_ him to stay, but left abruptly anyway. He felt helpless by his own doing. When Boris felt upset, he felt like he was stranded on that burning hot asphalt all over again, thinking he’d never have to stop running. That he’d just fall over and drop dead first.

"Is okay? It is warm enough?” Boris cupped the container with his hands.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s fine.” Theo took the soup and sat back on the couch, resting the warmth against his chest. “It’s fine... Thank you.”

"Of course, of course.” Boris leaned back too. He rested his feet on the edge of the coffee table. Tired, but with no need to take off again.

* * *

Theo had this very strange habit of only existing at night. Not that he wasn’t active or didn’t do anything in daylight, but the Theo that worked with Hobie was a far different one than the one that trudged home after five o’clock. Every memory Boris had of Theo-- of _his_ Theo-- was in the cool, summer darkness. The harsh grey winter night. Three in the morning when they both had to get up at six for errands and work. There was a safety in night, Boris knew. He also knew there was a danger in it, in having the world beyond the flickering reach of a streetlamp fall away completely.

After eating their dinner, Boris knew they had found the safe kind of evening. The bathroom was dimly lit with the runoff street lights streaming through the window. Theo was sitting in their bathtub, arms draped over the sides. Boris was on the floor beside him, recounting his day-- something he was too busy eating to do earlier.

“I tried coffee place you keep telling me about. Went in and asked for tea way I like-- and actually gave it to me! So hot nice woman put it in two cups and little, uh, neck tie.”

“Collar.” Theo said languidly. “It’s a coffee collar, but same thing.”

“Collar! Yes, cup had collar-- and two shirts! HA!” Boris nudged Theo’s arm. His finger lifted as he laughed. “Then had meeting with Misham-- was fire down on west eight-one. Misham knows people who work fire, a few very impressive antiques may have been _too burnt to be saved_... Boo-hoo, so sad, yes?”

“Hm.” Theo lifted his finger again. He seemed to be trying to match the steaming bath water in terms of similar states of matter. “Wait, what?”

“Nothing. More surprises for you soon, Potter. Few days time.”

“I think we need to investigate your definition of the word ‘surprise’.” Theo said, turning his head to Boris. He’d kept his glasses on, his tired but attentive eyes finding Boris sharply. “Today it was dinner, last week it was one hundred year old whiskey, a month ago you said you almost bought me an entire new set of dishware because I drunkenly said ours was tacky... Boris, these aren’t surprises, they’re ambushes.”

"Ack, do not know what you are talking about. Are nice things.” Boris shifted and recrossed his ankles. “You are hungry, like to drink-- and made big sale last week! You surprise first with good job-- and do not like dishes we have. All important gifts.”

Theo licked his lips and let his head loll back to center. “You’re crazy. You’re just a spendthrift that’s just a _bit_ too romantic for your own taste.” His fingers lifted once more. Boris finally noticed the motion of his hand was not an echo of the water’s slow waves, but a slow search in the open air.

Boris reached up and let Theo’s fingers bump into his own. Theo wrapped his fingers around one of Boris’s, letting his wrist hang loosely in the air. He’d closed his eyes, the blend of moonlight and neon washing over his face. Theo wasn’t quite ready for sunshine, but Boris would take it. He’d soak it in with Theo, leaning his cheek against the porcelain edge.

“Should talk about your day, Potter.” Boris said. “Is no good to sit on it.”

“Right now I’m sitting on my ass in boiling hot water cooking like a crab.” He laughed.

“Theo.”

"I’m fine. I just... Had a nightmare.” A pause. “While I was awake. No big deal. I have them all the time.” A longer pause. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do about it... What did I ever do before?”

“Try to kill yourself.” Boris said. Theo looked at him out of the corner of his eye; Boris had forgotten to soften his words. “Not best way to deal, is what I mean.”

"Am I supposed to... _cope_ or something?” Theo pulled the rest of Boris’s hand into his own. “ _Grieve_? What the fuck does that even-- I can’t do that.”

"Have not tried.” Listen, Boris _may_ have had to kick a heroine addiction in the past two years, but he was at least half way alright with the fact his mother was dead and his father was probably the same. Is was what they did to Boris when they were alive that kept him up sometimes.

Death? That was the easy part-- for Boris at least.

“I’m trying.”

“Are not.”

“Boris, I fucking swear--” Theo tightened his grip on Boris’s hand. “I... I am trying-- and _don’t_ say to try harder or so help me God, I’ll dunk your head in this water _right_ now.”

It also seemed Theo also _had_ to laugh at it all. His chuckle sounded like phlegm loose in his lungs, coming up with a hoarse cough and sniffle. His head fell back to the side, looking at Boris. The steam from the water had condensed on the cool, exposed porcelain and was slippery enough to slowly let Theo slip further into the water. His legs were bent and he left himself gently wash away.

“The water’s going to be hot for a while. Want to get in?” Theo’s shoulders were fully submerged.

“No, no. Am fine out here. Had very long day, don’t want to ruin bath with-- ack-- _dirt_.”

“I didn’t ask you because I wanted you to be clean.” Theo said, his chin touching the surface of the water. “I’m asking because I want you to be a little more naked than you are right now.”

Boris laughed again, full and warm. “Potter, do not use me as distraction.”

“I didn’t say I was.” Theo looked out of only one eye, a smirk lifting his cheeks. “Don’t put words in my mouth.” Theo pulled their hands into the water as he dipped under, just up to his nose. Boris reached and grabbed Theo’s glasses with his other hand, holding them still as Theo slipped out from under them.

“Avoiding what I said does nothing, Potter.” Boris placed the glasses on his own head and rested his chin on the edge of the tub. His right arm was nearly up to his elbow in water, his sleeve soaked. He counted the bubbles from Theo’s slow exhale-- or possible laugh-- as they rose to the surface.

It seemed they were both waiting for Theo to seize upward, startled by the pressure of the bath water; it always snuck up on him when he relaxed into it. Boris pulled Theo’s towel closer with his foot, quietly preparing to have to start talking in circles about things that didn’t _really_ matter in order to distract Theo from screaming and thinking he was going to suffocate, despite how much he was hyperventilating.

Under the water, Theo splayed out Boris’s fingers and rested his hand against his chest. The heel of Theo’s palm pressed against the back of Boris’s hand, cracking parts of his fingers accidentally. It wasn’t frantic or desperate, just firmly intentional. Theo should’ve come up already, Boris thought, but he was testing himself-- not for lung capacity, but some other limit that neither really wanted to acknowledge existed in both of them.

They weren’t invincible, and Boris really hated to admit it. They’d treated their bodies and minds as such when they were young, and now they were scared to acknowledge they damage they’d done-- or left festering for ten years. Seeing the evidence so clearly-- even underwater, gripping his hand-- was like seeing a crack in a ceiling. Growing growing growing, right over his head, unless he did something about it. They’d _both_ die in the rubble.

“Actually, Potter.” Boris said loudly, pulling on Theo’s hand. “In I go. Get back.”

“What?” Theo surfaced and spit out water. He wiped his eyes, squinting in the dark. “Did you say something?”

“Sit back, I am getting in.” Boris started pulling his shirt up over his head, not sparing time to unbutton it.

“Well that was fast.” Theo lowered his knees and sat back. He pulled his hands into the water with a soft splash. “Afraid I’m going to drown in here or something?”

Boris had to laugh, again. He wasn’t sure he was as subtle that time, but Theo’s face remained amused-- unaware of the cathartic numbness. “HA! Yes. Or something, Potter. Something."


End file.
